“Got no time for spreading roots
The time has come to be gone”
—Led Zeppelin
My life as a licensed driver began with Led Zepellin II. It was a decade ago this month on a spring dusk in the suburban kingdom of Orange County, Calif. I was a transformed man, the coast was beckoning, and I was leaving. And I was never going back.
Of course, it didn't start at that exact moment. To get there, I first had to endure six months of vehicle-related drudgery: waking up for first-period driver's ed with Mr. Reed; chauffeuring my mom and our cocker spaniel around the block in the family minivan; and incorporating into my vocabulary and then endlessly repeating lame acronyms like SMOG (“signal, mirror, over-the-shoulder, go” in case you're unfamiliar). Needless to say, it was truly awful stuff. And luckily, I don't remember much about it.
Then there was The Test, the 15-minute showdown that would exalt or crush my spirit. In the left corner: me, a curly-haired, scrawny high school sophomore, hands 10 and 2, mirrors adjusted, ready for anything. Riding shotgun: DMV guy, donning multi-colored shades and cooly clutching his clipboard, looking for any reason to condemn me to a lifetime of calling my mom for rides home from the movies.
But the test was a blur and today I'm not able to pick any real details out of it, other than that I almost failed completely for driving too slow (Like way too slow. I was going 20 in a 35.) and that I got marked up for not being able to back up parallel to a curb (which I still can't do).
No, it's not until I hear that chugging guitar riff from “Whole Lotta Love” that the emotions and memories of being a newly minted driver waft back into my consciousness. So let's start there, from the beginning, with Led Zeppelin II.
The first thing I did when I got home from the DMV that April afternoon, license in hand, was go to my room and make a recording of this record. Now this was still the age of the CD—the first iPod wouldn't be released until that fall—a time when people carried their music around like unrepentant sin, in hard plastic shells and black leather cases. And I was even worse off. My new set of wheels, a '95 powder-blue Camry that I shared with my parents, didn't have a CD player. Getting tunes for the road required a little bit of low-tech dirty work and help from a now extinct artifact: the cassette tape.
But there was just something right about recording an album onto a blank cassette. It was an art form, listening to the boombox as the record played through, making sure to flip to side B at the right moment so no songs got cut off. And if you wanted to make a mix tape, that was truly a daunting task. My friends and I made entire weekends out of it, laying out our collection of CDs on the floor and writing down, arguing over, then revising our set lists. And in the end, you felt like you created something, something you nurtured, invested in, cared for. The quality sucked, to be sure—eventually the tapes would become ruined from exposure to the sun or because something spilled on top of them—but listening to music on a cassette was about the love of the music and nothing else. It was a beautiful thing.
Needless to say, the record of my first solo ride was a big deal. I'm not sure why I chose Zeppelin's sophomore record, but there was no deliberation involved. Looking back, I guess more than any other time in my life, I needed to get the Led out. I needed to scream, and not just at my cocker spaniel for barking when I was trying to take a nap. I needed to scream like Robert Plant before a sold out show at Madison Square Garden. I needed to break free—from school, parents, and most of all, my own dorkiness.
Yes, Led Zeppelin II was the record that would christen the moment I became a new man. And I was ready. It wouldn't be long—a week, two tops—before girls would come, lots of them, pretty ones, wanting to ride with me. And I'd take them on dates. It didn't matter that I had never actually been on a date. Nor did it register that going on a date would first require me to ask a girl out, which meant talking to them, which I never did. “Don't bore me with details!” my brain argued. “You have f-ing wheels now! And a cassette tape of Led Zepellin II.”
Pretty soon, too, the cool kids at school would suddenly “get” me, like I was the quadratic equation or something. In fact, I thought to myself, the conversation would probably go a little like this:
Cool Kid I: Dude, he's not weird, just shy.
Me: I just like to keep to myself. I don't know, whatever.
Cool Kid II: And he's actually pretty funny, too.
Me: I do watch a lot of Simpsons episodes.
Cool Kid III: And did you know he plays guitar?
Me: Are you kidding me? ! I know like every Hendrix solo...Friday night? Yeah, I can go!
Once that record played through, I grabbed the keys and was gone—off to a beach bonfire night with my church youth group. The destination didn't matter, though. This was a turning point, and once that timeless guitar riff hit the stereo, I rolled the windows down and the world was officially on notice: Old Josh was dead.
I pulled out of my cul de sac a transformed man that warm spring dusk in the suburbs. The coast was beckoning, and I was leaving. And I was never going back.
